‘Present Laughter’: A Play on the Charms of Vanity
A review of ‘Present Laughter’, by Noël Coward; National Theatre Live, 2024.
You know, reader, I am not sure there is a better actor working today than Andrew Scott. Perhaps Joaquin Phoenix; but there is just something about Scott — his expressiveness, his power of sliding up and down the emotional scale, his mellifluous Irish brogue — that makes him a delight to watch. He also works hard. This year, I have seen him in All of Us Strangers (gorgeous), Vanya (brilliant) and — now — Present Laughter. And I was sceptical about Vanya, sceptical about the trend among actors towards playing all the parts themselves.
To Present Laughter, then. Written by the great Noël Coward and first performed in 1942, the play concerns the professional and personal trials faced by an accomplished and self-obsessed actor called Gary Essendine. The whole thing takes place in his London flat over a period of a few days. Gary, who is at the height of his powers and fame, is preparing for a theatrical tour of Africa, and in the opening scene is dealing with the fallout of a one-night stand with a young fan called Daphne Stillington. Daphne is besotted with Gary and refusing to leave his London flat.
Gary, who is at the height of his powers and fame, is preparing for a theatrical tour of Africa, and in the opening scene is dealing with the fallout of a one-night stand.
Unhappily for Gary, who is somewhat weary of the attention he receives, his personal and professional life are mixed up with one another. His ex-wife, Liz, manages his affairs; his efficient, long-suffering secretary Monica Reed manages his household. The fun of the play arises from Garry’s desperate attempts to maintain his composure and keep his life in order, despite the growing absurdity of the situations around him, many of them involving extramarital affairs and misunderstandings. A young playwright, Roland Maule, who worships Garry but disrupts the peace with his odd behaviour, adds to the chaos.
Coward explores vanity, the burdens of fame, and the intrinsically farcical nature of human relationships. Garry is outwardly self-confident and witty, but is shown in fact to be deeply vulnerable, dependent on others, and increasingly aware of the emptiness of his glamorous life. He is hopelessly lost without Liz and Monica, and at once madly in need and bored of the adulation and validation he gets. The play, as you may have guessed, is thought to be semi-biographical: Garry is an actor of ambiguous sexuality who sports a silk dressing gown very like that which Coward wore and was often pictured wearing in his carefully staged public pictures. He lives a life that is hectic and glamorous. He is undeniably self-absorbed (‘My worst defect is that I am apt to worry too much about what people think of me when I’m alive’) but charming and frail enough to elicit sympathy. He is also very funny.
The whole play is funny. Much comedy does not stand the test of time, often because it grounds its humour in what is funny only at that time and place. The humour in Present Laughter, in contrast, is enduring because it deals, like tragedy, with lasting human flaws and foibles and complicated relationships. Mundane exchanges become hilariously funny due to Coward’s wit, verbal flexibility, and sense of rhythm and timing. It is full of quips, barbs, banter and double-entendres delivered at a rapid pace that conveys urgency and throws light on the chaos of Garry’s life.
The humour in Present Laughter is enduring because it deals, like tragedy, with lasting human flaws and foibles.
All of this is rendered brilliantly by the cast, though the play undoubtedly belongs to its central character, and Scott. He is the swirling vortex who at once draws others in to his chaos and finds himself swept up in theirs. Scott can communicate a kind of wild emotional volatility (‘I am SOOOOOO changeable,’ Scott’s Moriarty says to his counterpart in Sherlock) which stands in stark contrast to the flat pragmatic speech of the women — Liz and Monica — who stop him from falling apart at the seams, and Daphne’s tone of starstruck adulation, which frankly bores him.
Everyone knows someone who is a bit like Garry Essendine: histrionic, overwrought, hysterical — simply put, a drama queen. If such people are apt to be dismissed as narcissistic, then Coward, in Present Laughter, seems to be redeeming them, showing them to be, in the end—and with some reservations—sympathetic. At the very least, insofar as Coward based Garry on himself, he redeems himself, as well as those who make their living on the stage or screen, by making himself—and them by extension—the butt of a very elaborate, very funny joke. In fact, Coward seems to delight in human diversity, evinced in the range of personalities, quirks and idiosyncrasies on display in Present Laughter. His gift is capturing and celebrating the nuances of our behaviour, bringing us to life in a way that is exaggerated for effect and yet, at the same time, feels brilliantly authentic.
